Turn competitive insight into action.

Understanding competitive positioning can very insightful but knowing what buyers think and do as they evaluate options is pure gold.

When we speak directly with buyers that have recently evaluated your company we can uncover a wealth of information into why you’re winning or losing sales.

Our approach is to listen as recent buyers tell their own story – to capture what they were thinking and doing while making a decision similar to the one you want to influence.

Surprisingly, buyers who chose a competitor are not only the most useful buyers to interview but are also among the most willing to speak about their experience. They’ve invested a good deal of time considering your solution and believed that you had the potential, so they feel compelled to share their experience and decision-making process.

The insights that we uncover allow you to prioritize what is most important to your prospective buyers regarding the benefits they hope to gain, the problems they’re trying to solve and what internal resistance they may be facing. You’ll have the inside track and can arm your salespeople with the buyer attributes that identify the influencers in their accounts and ensure that they provide the information these influencers need to build consensus and drive change in their organization.

Armed with actionable buyer insights, we present our findings back to your team in a working session that compares your features and capabilities with those of your closest competitor based on the relative importance to buyers. The result is a matrix that ensures what you have to say aligns with what the buyer wants to hear and stacks up well against your closest competitor. Imagine what prospective buyers will think when your messages match the exact topics they’re researching with answers that demonstrate your competitive strengths.

Customer Stories

INSIGHThought used buyer insights to spot a market shift and drive $2M in revenue.

A provider of ERP applications in the utility market space was struggling to gain the attention of buyers. Their product team had developed a suite of new application features that they believed would significantly change their competitive position in the marketplace but found no measurable jump in adoption.

Our buyer interviews revealed that senior managers at the utility companies had been blindsided by changes in state regulations that were recently reviewed and passed and were now totally focused on avoiding significant fines and penalties due to non-compliance. Our client tested the implications of these new regulations in a survey across their market and confirmed the cost impact that the new regulations would impose and the shift in buying behavior.

Our client responded by quickly developing a monitoring component to their application that they highlighted in a demand generation campaign aimed at helping utilities understand the cost implications of these new state regulatory changes. The campaign was incredibly successful generating over 20% response rate and closing 3 large deals exceeding $2M.

INSIGHThought used buyer insights to stop a competitor and prevent 60-75% discounting.

A provider of CRM software to the financial market was losing 80% of their deals to a single upstart competitor. The sales team was planning to discount by 60-75% to stop the bleeding and brunt the success of this competitor. They were going to win the battle but lose the war!

Our buyer interviews revealed that the competitor had tapped into the key capabilities that buyers were looking for (the same capabilities that our client provided but had considered unimportant) and were successfully positioning these capabilities as their strengths and our clients weaknesses. “I’m looking for the technical details that explain the capabilities of your CRM system said the buyer. I didn’t see any mention of them in your website or marketing materials.”

This executive then went on to describe the particular capabilities that he was looking for and the perceived limitations of our clients solution. Our client responded by revamping their website, content marketing and sales playbooks to address the capabilities and obstacles that were preventing buyers from choosing their solution. They have won 5 of the last 8 engagements.